 ESTHER R. ROTHSTEIN
by Professor Ralph L. Brill
I am honored to introduce an interview with Esther R. Rothstein,
filmed in 1988. Ms. Rothstein graduated from Chicago-Kent in 1949.
Until her untimely death in 1998, Ms. Rothstein was one of the
country's most outstanding lawyers, and a true role model for
women.
Esther Rothstein faced enormous obstacles when she began practicing
law, obstacles hard to imagine at the present time in history.
For example, in 1949, out of the more than licensed 6,000 attorneys
listed in the Chicago area, 150 were women. However, in reality,
only about twenty women actively practiced law at that time. The
rest were employed as court reporters, as legal secretaries, had
non-law-related jobs, or became housewives. Illinois had no woman
judges; only three women were Cook County assistant states attorneys;
only one woman lawyer was on the staff of the U.S. Attorney. It
was difficult for women to find employment as lawyers.
Esther, however, quickly rose to the top of her profession. She
demonstrated exceptional competence in negotiating agreements,
transactional work, and litigation, and was elected a partner
in the firm of McCarthy and Levin in 1955, thereby becoming one
of the first women in the country to become a partner at a major
law firm.
For the rest of her life, Ms. Rothstein dedicated herself to
the law and to philanthropy. Exhibiting in her volunteer work
the same passion and dedication with which she practiced her chosen
profession, she added to her resume an incredibly long list of
"founder of . . .", "president of . . .", and "first woman to...."
Thus, in 1961, she was one of nine founding members of the Women's
Bar Association Foundation, and soon became its president. She
served as president of the Woman's Bar Association of Illinois.
She chaired several Chicago Bar Association committees, and was
elected to the Chicago Bar Association Board of Managers in 1965.
A crowning achievement occurred In 1977, when Esther Rothstein
was elected as the first woman president of the Chicago Bar Association,
quite likely the first woman in the United States to lead a major
bar association!
Among her many other achievements were the following:
the first female director of Illinois Bell Telephone Company
(she agreed to do so because they "needed a woman's perspective.");
the first woman on the Chicago- Kent Alumni Board;
the first woman on the Chicago- Kent Board of Overseers;
the first woman life member on the Illinois Institute of Technology
Board of Trustees;
director, the Illinois Pro Bono Center;
director, the Lawyer's Trust Fund; o director, the Illinois
Humane Society;
director, the Youth Justice Institute;
director, the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education;
member, the Advisory Council on Degree Granting Institutions
of the State of Illinois;
member, Northwestern's Board of Visitors;
chair, the American Bar Association's Law Day Committee;
first woman chair of a standing committee of the American Bar
Association; and
Vice-President, the Mary Barteleme Home for Girls.
Esther was the deserving recipient of several major awards:
Induction into the Chicago Women's Hall of Fame 1989;
Chicago Volunteer Legal Service Award 1992;
Midwest Women's Center Lifetime Achievement Award 1994;
Woman's Bar Association Myra Bradwell Award 1995;
Chicago Bar Association Alliance For Women Founders Award 1998.
In 1993, she received a very special award:
the American Bar Association's Margaret Bent Women Lawyer's
Achievement Award. The award, created in 1991, was named after
the first woman lawyer in the country, Margaret Bent, who practiced
in the mid-1860's. Among Esther Rothstein's co-honorees that
year was Supreme Court Justice nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A few months later, during her swearing in speech at the U.S.
Supreme Court, Madame Justice Ginbsburg specifically cited Esther
Rothstein's career as a model for other lawyers, and ended her
own speech by quoting from Esther's speech at the Bent Awards,
saying : "Esther said she found women attorneys to be tough,
yet tender; wanting to win, but not vindictive; cautiously optimistic,
with the sense to settle for victories that do not leave one's
opponent bloodied and bowed; willing to be a link in a chain
that is strong, yet pliable."
Summing up Esther Rothstein's deserved position as a role model,
Federal District Court Judge Elaine Bucklo has said of her, "You
can't know Esther without wanting to strive to be a little bit
like her."
I present to you a great woman, and one of Chicago-Kent's most
distinguished alums, Ms. Esther Rothstein.
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